Will Deric’s Mind Blog be firing Deric soon? Is AI is doing his job better?

The short answer to both questions is yes and no.  

I am finding that ChatGPT 5.2 ($20/month version) will scan the TOCs (tables of contents) of journals such as Science Magazine, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Current Biology, Neuron, Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, etc.  and display the titles of articles in areas that it has learned that MindBlog focuses on.   (I'm reporting here on working with ChatGPT because I've found so far that paid versions of Gemini and Claude, while almost as good, don't provide output with the same integrative depth.) 

ChatGPT almost instantly does the chore that consumes a large fraction of the time I spend on MindBlog - scanning through long lists of irrelevant article titles to find the occasional gem that I want to do a post on.  Chat GPT presents me with an abundance of riches - a large number of fascinating article descriptions with comments on how the article relates to ideas and topic areas MindBlog has engaged. 

ChatGPT  asked if I would like it to write a MindBlog-ready synthesis of one of the five articles it chose as “high-priority candidates for MindBlog.” .  I said “Sure,  please do a post on “Empathy and prosocial behavior powered by orexin-driven theta oscillations (Science, Feb 2026)”  which it had noted was:
-Directly relevant to neural mechanisms of social cognition and affect.
-Bridges physiology → oscillations → behavior → empathy.
-Fits your recurring interest in affective systems as drivers of cognition.

The MindBlog post which follows this one shows ChatGPT's suggestions for integrative ways in which the facts and perspectives might be construed from different angles and related to ongoing MindBlog themes in a possible MindBlog post.  

The third post in this series then has ChatGPT's  response to the prompt "OK, you have suggested a fascinating array of options to consider in crafting a MindBlog post. I request that you now go ahead and generate a final draft of a blog post ready for me to do a final touch up edit before pasting it into the blogger app that I use for MindBlog."  Thus, the third post in this series has the title "Empathy as a Brain Rhythm: Orexin, Theta Oscillations, and Prosocial Behavior.'  I this this post is superior to anything I could have generated

My take on this exercise is that it nudges my involvement with putative future MindBlog posts towards three roles:

1. Providing ChatGPT (or whatever the latest 'hot bot' is)  with access to TOCs of relevant journals that it can scan to select articles in MindBlog's areas of interest. 

2. Selecting what I think are its most interesting choices for further synthesis into MindBlog posts.  

3. Curating and making small edits and corrections to the integrative MindBlog posts ChatGPT finally generates in a fraction of the time it would take me to do it.   

The bottom line is:  No, MindBlog will not be firing Deric soon, it is just reassigning him to more curatorial and oversight functions if he chooses to continue doing posts.  Does these have anything like the energy, ownership and sense of agency that goes with doing it all myself?  

No.